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Four Tips To Ease Growing Pains For Your Team And Your Business

Four Tips To Ease Growing Pains For Your Team And Your Business
by Shawn Kent Hayashi

Growing pains can be both exciting and challenging. It’s a thrill to see tangible proof that your business is succeeding. At the same time, finances, resources and people get stretched. Business owners committed to being profitable seek out experts to help them get the right balance between increasing revenue, investing in expansion, and paying bonuses. Getting professional advice on matters related to team development is equally as important.

It can be a costly mistake not to consider the culture and team that will grow your business.

One company I worked with had steadily expanded until it hit a growth ceiling. Company leaders couldn’t understand why revenues remained at the same level for three years in a row. A staff engagement survey revealed a number of issues that the leaders felt ill-equipped to handle. Fortunately, the COO had the presence of mind to seek out coaching in developing a high-performing team and culture.

During our work together, I introduced the leaders to four important concepts that helped them realign the organization. The result was, within the first year, this business pushed through its growth ceiling and dramatically expanded its client base.

If you’re a leader of a small to mid-size company that wants similar results, use these four tips to intentionally maximize your greatest resource: your people.

1. Create a culture that plays to everyone’s strengths.

To do this, you need to know the strengths, motivators and blind spots of everyone on your team -- including yourself. Sophisticated assessments can reveal this information quickly. Armed with data about individuals and the group as a whole, you can raise everyone’s awareness of how they work best. You’ll also be able to match people with roles where they’ll naturally excel.

What happens if you don’t know the strengths of your team members? Many leaders assume everyone is motivated by the same thing that motivates them, such as money or serving people. This mistake can result in low engagement and high turnover. And, when you put the wrong people in key roles, errors multiply, morale suffers, and both customers and team members become disgruntled.

Build a culture where people love what they do and there will be less focus on the pain of growth and more focus on winning together.

Read full article on Forbes.